Nightfall

by Jay Allan

  And, he had never found another way to bring about that peace.

  “Damage assessments coming in, Admiral.”

  “On my screen, Captain.”

  Barron watched the reports scrolled by, the AI’s best interpretation—which he knew was a fancy way of saying guess—of the effects of the first hits on the enemy ships. As he was scanning the data, he caught more flashes out of the corner of his eye. The second barrage, and a few seconds later, new reports. Four hits this time, as the rapidly approaching Hegemony line moved ever closer. Then, more damage assessments, and a confirmation of the effectiveness of the new, heavy particle accelerators.

  Then, perhaps thirty seconds later, the first report of a malfunction, of a critical reactor failure. Base number four. One of the smaller ones.

  Barron knew before he even read the follow up reports. The reactors had been thrown together, hastily set up and put into operation without any real safeguards. There simply hadn’t been time for anything more. The devastating hits on the enemy battleships had been the benefit of the rushed work to put the bases into battle. Now, Barron was watching the price of that gain.

  He read the reports as they moved before his eyes, and he imagined whole sections of the base contaminated with radiation. Anywhere near the reactor would be well above immediately lethal levels, and any crew in those compartments would already be dead at their stations, or lying on the cold, metal floors, gasping for their final breaths.

  Most of the rest of the complement of Base Four were dead men walking, he knew, poisoned beyond the ability of medical science to reverse. They might live for another hour, perhaps two, though how long they would be able to continue at their posts, if they could at all—or if they would stand to duty, knowing they were as good as dead—was a question he couldn’t answer.

  The rest of the stations fired again, and to Barron’s silent respect and near-astonishment, two of the guns from Base Four joined that volley. The enemy ships were rapidly closing the distance, and with the reduced range, the hit rates soared. All along the advancing Hegemony line, irresistible particle accelerator beams ripped into thick metal hulls, blasting systems to scrap. In a hundred compartments on the enemy ships, Barron knew the vacuum of space was rushing in, pulling crew out to their deaths, and bursting deeper, through stressed and weakened bulkheads and hatches.

  But, the one-sided battle was at an end. Even as the last barrage of particle accelerators fired, a new wave of death and destruction came, this one aimed at the great asteroid bases. The chunks of super-heavy metals fired from the magnetic guns of the enemy fleet ripped through space at enormous velocities. Those weapons were deadly to ships of the line, mobile platforms with engines and the ability to evade and dodge the attacks. The railguns were virtual doomsday weapons to the ships of the Confederation fleet, the only saving grace being a relatively low hit rate.

  The asteroids weren’t mobile, though. They’d been towed into place, and they didn’t have the ability to modify their vectors, to present difficult and unpredictable targets. They simply floated in place, and the main guns of the Hegemony battleships blasted them mercilessly, claiming vengeance for the damage the bases had inflicted.

  Bolt after bolt of metal slammed into the rocky asteroids, and where they struck, almost incalculable kinetic energy was released. Where base structures were hit, they simply vanished, consumed by the power of impact. Even where the shots missed the actual bases, they tore deeply into the asteroids themselves, vaporizing rock, and unleashing massive tectonic waves and great flows of molten rock. The hastily-constructed buildings, the compartments housing weapons and crews and nuclear fuel, were shaken apart. Reactor cores were torn open, spewing deadly radiation over kilometers, and underground control centers were buried under avalanches of rock.

  Barron felt his teeth grinding. He knew what was happening to the people on those asteroids…the people he’d sent there. Nguyen had issued the orders, of course, but Barron was part of the command team, and he wasn’t a man to hide behind technicalities. He’d been the prime mover in the creation of the asteroid bases, and that meant he had consigned those crews to the terrible fate unfolding on them.

  Even as the bases died, their outgoing fire continued. The number of guns firing declined, almost with every shot, as more railguns slammed into the asteroids. Base Seven was struck by almost half a dozen shots in rapid succession, and, as Barron watched on the scanner, the asteroid itself began to break apart, a great fissure cutting through its crust and deep into his iron core. It split into two sections, and as it did, the last functioning reactors went critical, and a series of fusion explosions wiped away everything men had put in place there.

  Barron turned away, his eyes moving back to the small screen on his workstation. The scene he was watching was a nightmare by any human standards, but the unemotional data the AIs were feeding him contained some cause for satisfaction. Fewer than forty percent of the frontline enemy battleships appeared to have functioning railguns, and even as he read the reports, he knew that Stockton’s wings were attacking again…and, out in the deeper reaches of the Olyus system, ‘Warrior’ Timmons and his people were about to do the same.

  He had to make a choice. If his line was going to pull back, it had to be now, before the last of the bases were destroyed. Before the enemy got close enough to use its remaining railguns to blast his ships to scrap.

  He wanted to stay, to bring his ships around, and hit the Hegemony forces, even as the last big guns on the bases fired. It would be a gamble, a desperate one, certainly…and probably a foolish one. But, Tyler Barron was a fighter, and pulling his big ships back constantly, allowing doomed bases and depleted bomber wings to fight his battles sickened him. He knew he should pull back, that any last stand should be—had to be—at the orbital fortresses around Megara itself.

  But, he couldn’t issue the order. The words simply wouldn’t come. He was on the verge of sending his task force forward into its final battle, when the fleet orders came in.

  It was Dustin Nguyen, the commander-in-chief, and while his voice was soft, filled with empathy for what his people were enduring, there was a strength of command there, too.

  “All task forces are to withdraw to gamma positions at once. Full thrust, all units. Avoid unnecessary contact with enemy main batteries until repositioned.”

  Barron shook his head. He didn’t want to obey. Running now, pulling back…it just seemed like something he couldn’t bring himself to do. He knew it made sense, he agreed with the logic. The withdrawal would probably allow time for a third bomber strike, at least with whatever remnants of the wings could get back and rearm quickly enough.

  He hated the idea of pulling back, hated himself for doing it. But, Tyler Barron always did what he had to do…and throwing his ships away, even as the bases were already blasted to wreckage, wouldn’t help anyone. It would be a surrender in its own way, to his anger, to his irrational rage.

  And, he’d reached his limit for mutiny in recent months. Nguyen was in command, and his orders had to be obeyed.

  “The task force will withdraw, Captain Travis. All ships, maximum thrust. Destination, point Gamma.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Point Gamma…directly around Megara itself.

  * * *

  Clint Winters stared at the comm unit, as though the message would somehow change if his gaze was intense enough. He’d been about to order his ships forward, to take advantage of the enemy’s redeployment of additional strength toward the inner system. He’d seen an opening—or what he’d convinced himself was an opening—and he’d been about to exploit it. His fighters had ravaged the enemy battleships twice, and he’d convinced himself enough of the railguns had been knocked offline to enable his battle line to engage.

  Then, Admiral Nguyen’s orders came in. Pull back. Withdraw to fallback positions.

  Winters wanted to ignore the orders. He’d fought the war against the Hegemony with thought, with carefully-devised tactics
. He’d shifted fleet units, fallen back, used what cover he could. Now, he just wanted to fight, to throw himself, and every ship under his command at the enemy and finish things once and for all.

  This was no struggle out on the frontier, around a world like Dannith, nor even a battle for a Core world like Ulion. Megara was the Confederation’s capital, the planet whose inhabitants had first pushed out after the Cataclysm, forming alliances and pacts that eventually coalesced into the modern Confederation. Could that nation, his nation, survive the loss of its first and central world? Win or lose, was this the final battle?

  He was on the verge of mutiny, of ignoring his orders. Then, he saw something. It was hard to follow at first. His long-range scanners were badly affected by the enemy jamming, and his readings on activity in the inner system were jumbled at best. But he caught a glimpse. Barron’s ships.

  Pulling back.

  Winters watched, and as he did, his insides roiled. It wasn’t easy for an officer known as the Sledgehammer to pull back, to retreat. But, there was no officer alive Clint Winters respected more than Tyler Barron.

  And, Barron was following the plan. Obeying orders.

  Winters looked back at the display, at his fighter wings making their way back, disordered sections of the enemy battle line following. He could take those ships…he was sure of it. Well, maybe something less than sure. But, he still wanted to hit them, he wanted it with a raging fire inside him.

  “We have our orders, Commander.” A pause after he forced out those words, and then a short, choked phrase following, barely pushed from his lips. “All ships pull back.”

  He’d helped create the battleplan, and he knew drawing as many enemy ships as he could to follow his force would achieve more than any glorious, and probably suicidal, attack could.

  He’d fought the war in his own head, the battle between the sides of himself, and he knew, as much as he knew anything, that Tyler Barron had gone through the same torment.

  This war wouldn’t be won by heart, though it would take incalculable amounts of such fortitude to endure. It would be won by brainpower, by carefully-executed plans, by men and women doing what they had to do, and not what the emotions inside them demanded.

  The battle wasn’t over, not yet. And the war wasn’t either. Sledgehammers didn’t like to retreat, but they did when they had no choice.

  They fell back, but they never gave up.

  * * *

  Andi sat in the command chair of Hermes, feeling both at home and very out of place. She was wearing the uniform of a Confederation captain, which she now was, of course. The documents were all executed and in place, and her commission was real…as real as any in the navy.

  It was something she was still trying to understand, a strange phenomenon she struggled to wrap her head around. She’d spent most of her life avoiding naval patrols, if not outright fleeing from them. The journey from frontier smuggler to command of the navy’s newest and fastest ship had been a strange one indeed.

  Yet, there was normalcy in it, too, and a strange thought that, even with all the unsettled feelings, it made sense for her to be just where she was. She was no longer the Badlands adventurer she’d been, treading both sides of the law with practiced dexterity. She was vastly wealthy, a woman with no need to risk her life for gain…or for anything else. Yet, she was there, on the fringes of the greatest naval battle in Confederation history.

  And, that was just where she belonged.

  Her friends now, everyone she cared about save for her old crew, were naval officers and Confederation spies, and the like, and for all she clung to her old images of herself, she’d already become one of them, informally at least, before Tyler Barron had handed her the two small stars of a Confederation captain and made it official.

  She looked around the small, sleek deck of her ship. Hermes was a beautiful vessel, the very pinnacle of Confederation achievement. But, it was a ship built to run, not to fight. Andi wished she had a battleship, even a cruiser…anything that would let her stand in the line of battle, alongside Dauntless. Alongside Tyler.

  You not being there is the point.

  She knew Tyler had confidence in her abilities, that he would trust her with almost any task, but he hadn’t asked her to take command of Hermes because of her skills. She loved him, and she knew he loved her, but the two also shared a mutual respect that lay under their most passionate feelings. But, Barron had allowed emotion to rule in this, to push aside his ability to look at her as a skilled captain and warrior, and to see only a lover, a woman he needed to know was safe.

  As safe as anyone could be just then.

  She knew he’d placed her where she was not just because he trusted her to evacuate the research teams from the Institute if necessary—which he almost certainly did—but because he wanted her to be safe.

  He needed her to be safe.

  He’d managed to concoct a job for her that almost mandated that she escape, whether Megara held or fell, and it was a task so vital, so utterly crucial, she couldn’t refuse to do it. If Megara was taken, the Confederation had little enough hope of survival, but what would remain was rooted heavily in the discoveries and new systems under development by the several hundred men and women she was charged to safeguard. Combined with the industrial might of the Iron Belt, the new technology just might give whatever remained of the navy a chance, at least, of continuing the fight.

  That was something Andi couldn’t ignore, a job she wouldn’t let herself fail to complete. However much it ripped her insides apart to think of leaving Tyler behind, perhaps to his death, she had to go.

  She’d had urges to bring her ship back to the inner system, to stand by Barron in the fight raging all across the system, and to share his fate, to meet death alongside the only man she’d ever loved.

  But, you would only help kill him…

  It was that thought, the realization that the best thing she could do for the one person who’d become more important to her than any other…was to abandon him. Tyler Barron was a brilliant tactician, a leader whose people would follow him anywhere. He was going to need everything he could muster to win this fight, or at least to survive it, and she knew if she refused to go, he would worry about her. She would distract him. And, that distraction could kill him.

  Leaving him was unthinkable, but the thought of killing him, or contributing in any way to his death, shook her to her core.

  It was painful, and unavoidable. She’d tried not to think about it anymore, and she’d just been sitting where she was, waiting.

  And then, the wait ended.

  “Captain Lafarge, we’re receiving a fleet communique via drone.” A pause. “It’s from Admiral Barron on Dauntless, Captain.”

  Of course, a drone…there’s no way Dauntless could have burned a direct signal through all that enemy jamming…

  She could feel the tightness inside. She knew what the message said, before it was decoded. Before she even listened to it.

  “Directly to my line, Commander.” Her tone was emotionless, robotic.

  I will go. I will do what you need me to do, Tyler. But, please, fight as you must, use everything you’ve got…just don’t throw your life away, my love…

  Chapter Fifteen

  Approaching Resistance HQ

  Planet Dannith, Ventica III

  Year 317 AC

  Holcott doubled over and began coughing uncontrollably. He gasped for breath, and wretched as he spat up some yellowish foam, all his stomach had to offer. He’d been running, almost without stop, for what? Two days? Was that even possible?

  He sucked in another lungful of air, and he turned and looked to either side of him. Two companions, one on his right and one on his left, all that remained of the force that had accompanied him to watch the execution of his Marines.

  Our Marines…we are all Marines…

  He turned and looked behind him, as he had done every quarter kilometer or so, for the last day. He was all but sure his small band
had finally eluded their pursuers, but it was the ‘all but’ part that rattled him. If he’d missed something, led the Kriegeri search and destroy teams back to headquarters, he himself had been the instrument of the downfall of his forces.

  What remained of his forces.

  The resistance had possessed a dozen bases when the fight had begun, and forty or more outposts and safe houses, places from which action against the occupiers had been coordinated. But, the Kriegeri had proven themselves to be ruthlessly efficient, and they had systematically hunted down his raiding parties, uncovered the locations of his bases, until nothing remained save the final refuge.

  He’d lost most of his Marines, too, and service with his resistance had proven to be nothing so certainly as it had been a path to death. As a Marine, he expected endless fortitude from his people, but he was still amazed that those who remained still followed him. The enemy had made repeated announcements, distributed dispatches, offered in every way to spare those who surrendered…but all to no avail. Not a single Marine had left his post, nor expressed the intent or desire to yield.

  He looked around again, doublechecking. Or, was it triple checking? He couldn’t remember. The exhaustion was wearing him down, but he wasn’t going to let himself make a mistake, not this close to safety.

  Or, what passed for safety on Hegemony-occupied Dannith.

  He moved forward, heading down the mostly hidden path that led to the headquarters. He suspected the pickets were watching him, but he knew the wouldn’t show themselves, for the same reason that spawned his own caution. They would be checking to ensure that he and his companions weren’t being followed, and if they spotted any sign of the enemy, they would alert the base.

  As Holcott approached the hidden entrance, he allowed himself to relax, just slightly. There was still no sign of pursuit, and in just a few minutes, he would be inside the headquarters, back to the remnants of Dannith’s defense force.